Amazon and eero announced on February 11th, 2019, that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire eero. eero’s home mesh WiFi systems set up in minutes and blanket every room of a customer’s home in high-performing, reliable WiFi.

10G-class fiber access technologies have begun to ship in volume and in the long term growth will be driven by demand for higher-capacity access networks to serve enterprises and residential customers. We expect the ramp up to materialize from 2019 onward, as telcos will need to compete with each other and cable MSOs offering gigabit services as well as position themselves to support mobile transport.

In January, Ericsson announced it is taking substantial measures to fix its struggling Business Support Systems (BSS) business, including the booking of provisions and restructuring charges of SEK -6.1 billion ($687 million) during Q4 2018. Ericsson has been pursuing a cost reduction and portfolio modernization strategy in an attempt to turn its Digital Services business into a profitable one, and it has reported some progress in the OSS and Cloud Core areas of the Digital Services portfolio—but none in the BSS area.

With the dawn of 5G networks right around the corner, 2019 promises to be an exciting year full of announcements, deployments, and official launches. But how will WiFi coexist alongside 5G? More importantly, how will the carrier WiFi market pan out in 2019 once 5G is introduced? Clients, please log in to view the full content.

Skyworth Group has concluded the acquisition of Allied Electronics Corporation Limited (Altron)’s set-top box manufacturing business (Altech UEC South Africa). Altron announced in Q3 2018 that it was close to selling off the business, with the Competition Commission giving the regulatory nod of approval in Q1 2019.

Despite a wave of travel warnings issued by several Western countries, I made it in and back safely from China without any troubles. Surprisingly enough, I was warmly welcomed by the Beijing International Airport immigration officers and I have to say that I was impressed by the smooth process made possible by the implementation of new kiosks that take care of fingerprints and pictures prior to meeting an immigration officer. And when I left China, the security guards liked my Huawei badge and showed their deep appreciation by giving their thumbs up.

Already known for the innovative capabilities that propelled its cloud and SDN/NFV ascension over the past decade, Netcracker, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, never rests on its laurels and keeps pushing the envelope. This time around, though, the bar was lifted very high. Netcracker has developed and launched a new cloud-based service that essentially includes everything the company has in its OSS/BSS product and services offering. Named Business Cloud, the platform leverages Netcracker’s cloud-based SDN/NFV and IT portfolio—from VNFs to orchestration, OSS, BSS, portals, and a digital marketplace—and offers the complete set as a service to whoever needs to build a cloud infrastructure to turn up new digital services. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

With the US, China, South Korea, Japan, the Middle East, and the UK in the 5G driver’s seat, there is no doubt that some serious work needs to be done in the back office. 5G network rollouts are making headlines from a radio standpoint, and we expect a significant rollout ramp-up this year that will pave the way for nationwide coverage in 2020 in most of the above countries and regions. The question is, “What’s happening in the back office?” Not that much. It’s digital transformation business as we know it, so long as we continue to deal with the same use case—and that is us, human beings who have turned into mobile bandwidth hogs. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

Capacitive fingerprint sensors in consumer devices peaked in unit shipments in 2018, while the price heavily declined by over 40% vs 2017. The overall price for a packaged fingerprint sensor in 2018 was $1.2 ($1.1 for capacitive fingerprint sensors, and $5.8 for in-display). For mass market mobile phone applications, prices were under $1 by the end of the year.

In a turn from the desynchronized regional telecom capex growth we experienced for the past few years, the global economy started 2018 with strong, synchronized growth, but momentum faded as the year progressed and growth trends diverged. Notably, the economies of the eurozone, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China began to weaken. In contrast, the US economy accelerated, thanks to fiscal stimulus. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

To address several customer requests about convergent charging market vendor dynamics, we conducted additional research to further explore the “charging” segment of our 27 July 2018 Revenue Management Market Report - Regional; this segment accounts for $6B, or 51%, of the $12B total revenue management market revenue for 2017. After evaluating the convergent charging segment, which makes up more than 60% of charging, we found a slightly different ranking than for the full revenue management market: Amdocs stays at #1 with 17% share of the convergent charging segment, followed by Huawei (11%) and Netcracker (9%), which are #3 and #2, respectively, in total revenue management market share. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

As I did at the same time last year, I went back to my chairman role at Telco Data Analytics USA San Francisco, held November 28 and 29. For self-organizing network (SON) fans, pioneers, and pundits, it was rewarding to see the role SON is already playing in network automation, leveraging crucial data sets from big data analytics. Overall, the event covered a broad spectrum of players involved in different aspects of data collection, processing, sharing, and protection under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules. In fact, we started and ended the event on GDPR; as we’re all affected one way or another, it was a lively topic. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

As a warm up for Thanksgiving festivities, Huawei pulled off its ninth Global Mobile Broadband Forum, an extraordinary two-day event at ExCeL London with a total of 2,200 attendees and participants, 57% more than last year’s event, which was also in London. Although it’s not yet at the level of the SalesForce.com event that gathered 170,000 attendees in San Francisco last September—one-fifth of the city’s population—Huawei remains by far the only company in telecoms that has the capability, resources, and capacity to organize such a big event with a C-level league of speakers. Clients, please log in to view the full content.